Exploring vintage jazz vinyl with a focus on label and pressing details, discographical information and critical musings on the music found within the grooves.
Little Niles features a couple of jazz legends in Randy Weston and Johnny Griffin, along with the outsized and under-appreciated talents of trombonist and arranger Melba Liston. It's an excellent hard bop record that has flown under the radar despite the pedigree of it's players.
Read MoreStarting with Black Byrd in 1973, Donald Byrd and the Mizell Brothers practically created a new sub-genre of jazz funk music, and 1974's Stepping Into Tomorrow may very well be the best of the albums that resulted from their amazingly consistent time working together.
Read MoreThe concept behind Layers is simple enough: McCann wanted to make an album of the sounds he was hearing in his head using only electronic keyboards, synthesizers and overdubbing. He recorded over rhythm tracks laid down by a group of percussionists who had previously accompanied him, and the resulting jazz record is quite unlike anything that had come before it.
Read MoreHampton Hawes spent 1972 through 1974 recording for Prestige Records where he explored the possibilities that electronic keyboards could provide in a jazz setting. David Axelrod serves as the arranger on the album, adding his unique set of funky skills as an arranger and producer to the proceedings.
Read MoreBorn To Be Blue! was Bobby Timmons' final album released during his fruitful tenure with Riverside and it sums up his funky and bluesy approach to the piano, a sound that was so important to the development of the hard bop sound. He was joined by some top-shelf talent with either Sam Jones or Ron Carter in the bassist's chair and the MJQ's Connie Kay performing his magic on the drums.
Read MoreBy 1976 Dexter Gordon had all but become a forgotten figure in the mainstream jazz world. His style of jazz had fallen out of fashion, pushed to the fringe as the more commercial leanings of fusion and smooth jazz became the flavors of the day. His successful return to the United States - after years in a self-imposed exile -was wonderfully documented on the double-LP Homecoming an album made even better with the presence of Woody Shaw blowing his tail off on the trumpet.
Read MoreGenesis is a fantastic piece of spacey post bop jazz featuring a fiery piano-less quintet with a talented three horn frontline. The music is a gorgeous mix of the soulfulness of hard bop with the freer styles of the avant-garde, and Jones anchors the whole affair with the type of inventive playing on the skins that has made him a legend.
Read MoreWhile Fats Navarro didn't leave us a large body of work to appreciate, his true lasting legacy is the influence he had on the trumpeters that would come after him in the '50s and '60s. It would not be incorrect to say that as far as the jazz trumpet style and sound we know and love, all roads lead back to Fats Navarro. The double-LP Prime Source focuses on what is generally considered his finest period - the years 1947 to 1949 - when he worked with Tadd Dameron and Bud Powell, as well as in a group he co-led with his close friend and mentor Howard McGhee.
Read MoreBy the time Enlightenment was released in 1973, McCoy Tyner had already been all over the jazz scene in the 1960s, before making the move to Milestone records 1972. With Milestone he would release a string of outstanding records, the earliest of which (including Enlightenment) would play an important part in cementing his status as one of the giants of jazz piano.
Read MoreConference Of The Birds is rightly considered a masterpiece of avant-garde jazz, due in no short order to the giant talents of the musicians involved, and it remains an immensely pleasurable and listenable album to this day.
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